Zero

Unfortunately I cannot credit the source of this speculation as I forgot where I read it. But I find it interesting and hope you might as well.

The form of "0" might perhaps have derived from early systems of counting. If stones or pebbles were placed in the soil or sand while counting baskets of lentils or whatever, lifting a stone to indicate the absence of one item through bartering or other loss would leave a hollow impression in the earth...

A delicious candy bar that's hovered at the very outer fringes of candy popularity for over eighty years. It was created in 1920 by Hollywood Brands, Inc., the company run by the candy impresario Frank Martoccio, founder of the F.A. Martoccio Macaroni Company of Minneapolis, Minnesota. The Zero became part of the Hershey family in 1996.

Zero candy bars are known for their white chocolate coating, succulent nougat and caramel filling, and distinctive silver and blue wrapper. Hard to find, but well worth the effort. Ask at your favorite confectioner!

When asked to count to ten, a person would usually sound like this: one, two, three, four... et cetera; the chances are very unlikely that a person would start with zero, which is not considered a counting number. Zero is usually seen as just another number, and that a story of zero would simply have the length and value of the number itself. Despite what one would think, this one numeral was invented, or discovered, as some would consider it, and has an extensive history of its several names and the common "0" symbol. The well-disputed properties of it are unlike any other number. This is mainly because the concept of nothing as a number is hard for most humans to be able to understand. After all, can nothing be given a name and accepted as something?

History of the Modern Number Zero

The Egyptians used different hieroglyphs about 3500 B.C. to represent numbers using a decimal system. There were glyphs to represent 1, 10, 10^2, 10^3, 10^4, 10^5, and 10^­6. These glyphs were written in descending order additively to show different numbers. If a category of numbers was missing, as in the number 207, this was easily visible by the glyphs that were used for the 2 and 7. The 2 would be shown with the symbol for 10^2, and the 7 with glyphs for 1. This was a very hard way to write numbers, as they would become very long, and the amount of numbers that could be written were limited to ninemillion. Though, at the time, Egyptians had no use for numbers as large as that. (Gullberg, p.34) The Egyptians did use a form of zero for the reference point during construction guidelines and as the answer to a numbersubtracted from itself. (Origin of a Formal Fallacy...)

The Hindus are most credited to the invention of the symbol 0 and the true usage of positional notation. This is because they have well documented use of it just like a real number. In 876 A.D., the number 270 was written as 27° on a stone tablet that was for an order of flowers for a temple of Vishnu. The symbol was likely to have been used long before this, but the real question is why the emptycirclesymbol was used. Some consider this a Greekdiscovery, because on a drawing of a counting table an O was used where the 0 would be. This was most likely because the symbol looked like the first letter of the Boetian alphabet, the "Obol," which also was a coin that was considered to be worth almost nothing. (Kaplan, pp.23, 31)

The names for zero has many different possible origins, most derived from Hindu words like sunya, meaning empty, and kha, once used in a book for the word "place" in place value (empty value). The Arab merchants that often used Indianmath used the Indiansunya but it evolved to sifr and as-sifr. By the time this name had gotten to Venice, it had evolved into "zero." (Kaplan, pp.43, 44, 93)

By the Laws of Multiplication, any realnumbermultiplied by zero equals zero. ("Numerals," Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia 2000) Zero is the only realnumber in which everything multiplied by it equals the same thing. Multiplication is seen as taking a number and putting it into a certain number of groups, for example: if there were three bags with fourapples in each, how many apples are in all the bags added together? (12). If there were five bags, with no apples in each one, how many apples are in all the bags added together? If there were no bags, and there were fiveapples sitting where the bags would be, how many apples are in the bags? The answer to both of these questions is no apples, or zero. So anything multiplied by zero ends up with nothing in those groups, or with an answer of zero.

Division, like multiplication, is also best described by groups. If there were 18 bananas, and you put them into 3 boxes, how many bananas would be in each box? There would be six. If there were no bananas and you put nothing into 3 boxes, how many bananas would be in each box? The answer would be no bananas, so this shows how zero divided by anything equals zero. What if there were 18 bananas; how many bananas would be in each box if there were no boxes? If the boxes were there, could we tell how many bananas would be in them if we don't know the total number of boxes? It is most commonly considered "undefined," because we don't know enough information to say how to divide the bananas up. A better way to look at this problem is by using an example from division's cousin, multiplication. 10/2=5 because 5x2=10, 9/3=3 because 3x3=9, but 4/0=?? Nothing times zero can equal four, because everythingtimeszeroequals zero. (Dr. Math FAQ...)

If this is true, then isn't 0/0 undefined? But also, any number divided by itself is one. For example, if there were nineducks and you put them into nineboxes, that's one duck in each box. But if there were no ducks and you didn't put them into any boxes, then there would be nothing that you didn't put into anything. Isn't that just zero? Because there are too many questions about this function also, it too is "undefined."

1. To set to 0. Usually said of small pieces of
data, such as bits or words (esp. in the construction `zero
out'). 2. To erase; to discard all data from. Said of disks and
directories, where `zeroing' need not involve actually writing
zeroes throughout the area being zeroed. One may speak of
something being `logically zeroed' rather than being
`physically zeroed'. See scribble.

An incredible computer magazine that was unlike anything that came before. Published by Dennis Publishing and edited at launch by Gareth Hendrincx. The first issue went on sale in November 1989. It covered the 16-bit home computers (Commodore Amiga, Atari ST and IBM PC) and acknowledged that the users of these machines were mostly adults.

Zero ran for about 30 issues and won the 'European Magazine of The Year' prize, before folding. Game Zone, and its successor PC Zone, carried the torch, although most of the original staff have moved on. A large number of Future Publishing magazines shamelessly aped Zero over the years, the ill-fated Mega being a prime example. Only Super Play (edited by ex-YS and Zero bod Matt Biebly) managed to come close, but even that was a bit full of itself.

In the financial world a "zero" is a bond that offers only capital gain in the form of a single future payment at maturity (i.e. no coupon payments). A zero would sell at a discount in a market with a positive interest rate.

Zero is the addition identity meaning given any number a, a + 0 = a.
Zero has the property that 0 * a = 0. Proof
a = a
a*1 = a
a*(1 + 0) = a
a*1 + a*0 = a*1
a*0 = 0

Also, we must have that zero be diffferent then the multiplication identity, 1 (where a*1 = a). Otherwise we would have all numbers equal to 0. Since a*1 = a and a*0 = a, if 1 = 0, then a = 0 for all a.
More generally, zero is the name given to the addidtive identity in an abeliangroup. Also in any ring, if one and zero are the same then the ring only has one element, namely zero itself (some then define a ring as having zero different from one).

The concept or meaning of zero strikes me as having, in some sense a positivity or substantiveness that is empirically verifiable. For starters, zero is big enough to be divisible by any natural number A since A x 0 = 0, so it must have some substance or size.

When we say we have zero dollars in our pocket, we mean we have absolutely nothing in our pocket- but do we?

then his average grade would instead be (80 + 90 + 100 + 70 - infinity) / 5 = roughly negative infinity. But of course he does not sink to a grade of roughly negative infinity after getting a zero on one of five quizzes.

In a similar way if you have a fuel economy guage on the dashboard, and you idle at zero miles per hour, all the positivity of gas mileage you gained on the highway does not just get swallowed up in the few moments of some infinite nothingness of speed. Instead the decline in fuel economy is gradual as you sit there idling. You actually see this behavior on the guage and this seems to be empirical verification of a substantiveness of zero that is greater than absolute nothingness equal to negative infinity.

In other words zero is, in an empirical, experiential and verifiable sense, something greater than an "absolutely nothing" equal to the our most extreme mathematical expression of nothingness (negative infinity). There are obviously gradations of nothingness far more impressive than zero; and, if negative infinity is at the bottom of the scale of gradations of nothingness then the negative numbers also have some empirical substantiveness and are not just artifacts invented to keep track of debits and help balance checkbooks.

Why is this important? Because scientists are wondering where all the dark matter in the universe is hiding of course.

The point from which the graduation of a scale, as of a thermometer, commences.

⇒ Zero in the Centigrade, or Celsius thermometer, and in the R'eaumur thermometer, is at the point at which water congeals. The zero of the Fahrenheit thermometer is fixed at the point at which the mercury stands when immersed in a mixture of snow and common salt. In Wedgwood's pyrometer, the zero corresponds with 1077° on the Fahrenheit scale. See Illust. of Thermometer.

3.

Fig.: The lowest point; the point of exhaustion; as, his patience had nearly reached zero.

Absolute zero. See under Absolute. -- Zero method Physics, a method of comparing, or measuring, forces, electric currents, etc., by so opposing them that the pointer of an indicating apparatus, or the needle of a galvanometer, remains at, or is brought to, zero, as contrasted with methods in which the deflection is observed directly; -- called also null method. -- Zero point, the point indicating zero, or the commencement of a scale or reckoning.